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News Stating the Obvious Stating The Obvious SC Rep. Bobby Harrell is a D----d Liar!
News Stating the Obvious Stating The Obvious SC Rep. Bobby Harrell is a D----d Liar!
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11 November 2011
I received this piece of tripe in my email a couple of days ago:
Dear Friends –
I wanted to pass along an Op-Ed published around the state that I co-authored concerning a very important case currently before the SC Supreme Court. In the Bodman Case, Democrats are using the judicial system to raise your taxes and ultimately grow the size of government to unprecedented levels.
Democrat’s $3 Billion Backdoor Tax Hike
November 7, 2011
By:
Bobby Harrell, Speaker of the House
Glenn McConnell, Senate President Pro Tempore
A $3 billion tax increase would be forced on all South Carolinians if a lawsuit recently filed in the SC Supreme Court succeeds. The suit is being brought by Dick Harpootlian, the Chairman of the SC Democratic Party, representing Matthew Bodman. The lawsuit would raise taxes by 6 percent across the board on many everyday items such as residential electricity and water bills, prescription drugs, groceries, newspapers and diabetic supplies, just to name a few. It would abolish all of our state’s sales tax exemptions, resulting in the largest tax increase in our state’s history.
Faced with a conservative General Assembly that has proven its resolve to cut government spending instead of raising taxes to balance our state’s budget, this group decided to bypass the Legislature by taking their tax hike crusade to court, and the SC Supreme Court has agreed to hear their case.
You may not think this will greatly affect you, but this backdoor tax increase would be paid by every single South Carolinian and would swell the size of our government. Adding $3 billion in new taxes would grow our state’s current $6 billion General Fund Budget by an astounding 50 percent. (Continue reading here)
I hope you’ll continue to read more into this important case and look out for important updates by visiting the Speaker’s Facebook Page and following by the Speaker’s Twitter Feed.
Thank you for letting your voice be heard on these important matters, and let me know if I can ever be of assistance.
Sincerely,
Bobby Harrell
SC Speaker of the House
The only problem with what he says is that it is a complete misrepresentation of what is going on. The State of South Carolina is being sued due to its unequal treatment or "unequal protection" under the law.
Equality under the law is a founding principle of our country. The term equality, as in "equality under the law," is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and is a necessary and fundamental requirement for liberty.
"A $3 billion tax increase would be forced on all South Carolinians . . . " Oh, really? You call it a tax increase, Mr. Harrell? When people get special privileges handed out to them by members of the general assembly in exchange for selling their votes and then when the court system might restore the founding American principle of equality under the law so that EVERYBODY has to pay the same taxes, YOU call it a tax increase? Give me a break!
Let me tell you something, you lying, vote-selling cretin: equality under the law means that people are protected from abuse just such as this. Equality under the law means that if one person has to pay a sales tax, everyone has to pay the same sales tax. Equal protection is provided for in our South Carolina Constitution. When you violate that principle, you're granting a government favor to a special group of individuals, or, in some cases, to just one individual or an individual corporation. We fought a revolution in the late 1700s against a king whose source of influence and power was the handing out of these sorts of special privileges to powerful friends and allies. We made equality under the law a cornerstone of our governance. So how does it feel to be officially acknowledged as a full blown fascist, Bobby Harrell?
Harrell is, of course, outright lying when he says that this is a "tax hike." This is merely an attempt to equally apply the law to all. Instead of a 5% sales tax, we could lower the state sales tax to 2% or 3% if it weren't for all the special exemptions. The crooks in the statehouse now exempt more sales taxes than they collect. That is because a large portion of the sweat off our brows is being used to subsidize the elites who have a sense of entitlement far more dangerous, destructive, and abusive than other type of welfare. Our system is at best feudal, at worst, tax slavery.
And yeah, when it comes down to it, this can be compared to the civil rights movement. When one group of people--well connected, corporate types who spend a lot of money lobbying--get to take advantage of a large group of other people--hard working, unconnected, tax-paying citizens--then we have a case of elitism and snobbery as dirty and corrupt as any that discriminated due to the color of one's skin.
Corporate welfare elitism in this state has made South Carolina a slave state once again as far as the ruling class politicians and their money-shoveling friends are concerned. Instead of their corporate cronies investing in their own businesses and playing on a level playing field, they are getting ahead by investing in corrupt politicians with the payback many hundreds, if not thousands of times, the amount invested. They are handed out billions of dollars in tax payer money, making their products, management abilities, customer service, etc. much less important in maintaining a "profit" and the company much less answerable to what is supposed to be a free market.
Such "government enhanced" companies are receiving OUR money to supplement their endeavors. Instead of making it all themselves, they help destroy competition, make new companies much less likely to show up in the same field, and otherwise defy the American way. Their special status and accompanying power and privileges are decreasing our consumer choices and decreasing our pocketbooks at the same time. Mussolini, if he were alive today, would be very proud of Bobby Harrell and Glenn McConnell, but true South Carolinians and true Americans should be deeply ashamed of how bad things are here.
Each company lured here or otherwise receiving benficence by a law (which is essentially at the point of a gun since force is all the government really has to ensure compliance) is a potential Solyndra, a federally subsidized company that went bankrupt after receiving over $500 million in guaranteed loans from the Obama administration. Not coincidentally, the heads of Solyndra were huge money raisers for Obama. We can see how clearly it works at the federal level in such an example but there seems to be some disconnect for voters not realizing how identical, systemic, institutionalized corruption works at the state level as well. Who wants to bet against the probability that a lot of that money wound up in the private bank accounts of individuals who helped Obama become president?
Corporate welfare is, in particular, a real can of worms. When government starts handing out money to any branch of industry or specific corporation, there is then no real principle stopping them from giving money to anyone they want. But then, there are no moral principles in the first place with them and members of the general assembly know that they're operating a favor factory designed to enrich themselves in power and money by doing the same for their cronies, many times greater in magnitude, at tax payer expense.
Bobby Harrell also fails to mention, when he's talking about the general fund--as if that's all the money in the budget--that the real cost of state government this year is a record-setting $22 billion dollars! While a large percentage of people here are jobless or under-employed and wages and salaries are down for those with jobs, Bobby Harrell and Glenn McConnell are spending more money this year than ever before! They do not care about us. They are only in the statehouse to serve themselves.
Strangely enough, according to John Steinberger, it turns out that Bobby Harrell and Glenn McConnell are co-sponsors of the Fair Tax which would eliminate all sales tax exemptions and income tax! Could it be that their signing on to the Fair Tax reform movement was merely a way to dangle an issue before voters in each election without ever bothering to seriously pursue it? Like abortion and other issues, that is the cynical modus operandi of the crooks in the statehouse: promise to promote certain legislation in order to get elected and then never deliver. After all, if they ever actually delivered, they'd lose the usefulness the issue has in getting them re-elected. It's all about power for such so-called "men." It is never about moral principles.
Comments
My point was that the exemptions going to corporations are not being passed along any more than the degree necessary to benefit the corporations in remaining competitive. That's just common sense. If you can do a comparative scientific study and prove otherwise, go for it.
The prices of goods will be determined by the market and what they can get for their goods independent of whatever exemptions a corporation is getting. They are not going to calculate what they benefit from tax breaks and then say, "Duh, gee! I guess we have to take exactly this much off our prices and pass it on to the consumer." That is not reality.
In any case, I'm primarily against fascism based on the principles of the matter. Fascism means unequal treatment under the law. Fascism (a form of socialism as is communism) is not just a small mistake nor a slight error of judgement nor a little "oops!" moment. Fascism is fundamentally, morally WRONG.
If YOU want to argue in favor of it, go ahead. I don't care how many great and wonderful monuments to collectivism result from stealing money from one group and giving it to another. The ends do not justify the means. Even if I were to somehow gain from the system--which I do not--I'd rather do without than to benefit from an immoral system.
Also, I do not characterize all corporations as "evil" as you imply. Individuals running corporations are evil to the extent that they participate in evil practices. I consider Amazon.con's extortion techniques to be evil when they threatened to leave if they did not get their sales tax exemption. That is the stuff of mobsters and criminal gangs.
It takes two to tango and without willing participants in the practice of fascism both in government and in the corporate world, we would not have such immoral activities going on. I'm not willing to be a tax slave to help some corporate big wigs or vote selling politician. It just doesn't work out to be the best thing for our state and country to allow this rampant corruption.
Ok...how much in exemptions are going to evil corporations and how many are going to average taxpayers? Given your extensive rant void of any specific details, I would really like you to answer this question. Otherwise I'm pretty convinced you don't know what your talking about.
The GOP has been in power for HOW LONG in this state? WHERE'S THE REFORM????
They're LYING! It's that simple. And you actually believe them??
They have no intention of reforming taxes in such a way to hurt their power to redistribute our tax dollars. They dangle the issue every election in front of gullible voters and then do squat when it's time to make it happen.
All the court is doing, if it finds in favor of Bodman, is that the exemptions are illegal according to the SC Constitution's mandate for equal protection under the law. That is, the court would be correcting the behavior of a bunch of mafia style crooks who will not control their spending.
Once the decision is made in the court, then the public outcry ought to be loud enough to get rid of any of the crooks who don't want to lower the sales tax across the board FOR EVERYONE.
If there is a sales tax, apply it EQUALLY TO ALL. Then CUT the hell out of the sales tax. Get it???
We could probably even get by with a 1% or less sales tax if it were applied to everything and spending were cut. Spending by the state is the biggest tax of all. As things stand now, the sales taxes are redistributed to favored corporations or branches of industry. That's called fascism.
And don't fool yourselves into thinking that the citizens are getting a break. As long as some corporations are getting tax exemptions for their products and others are not, in all likelihood, they're only passing along only enough of those savings that allow them to lower their prices just a little to undercut the competition.
The mechanism of institutionaliz ed corruption in this state is the politicians' power of redistribution of our wealth to corporations. The corporations pay them money in the form of campaign donations or even outright graft and then they pay back the corporations with our tax dollars.
Amazon.con is a perfect example. The crooks denied the sales tax exemption at first, held out their hands, got their money, and then returned and passed it in overwhelming numbers. It was all a dog and pony show stuff intended to raise the ante.
The sales tax is used by them just like other taxes are used. Empowering politicians should not be the object here. Empowering the citizens should be. Only by taking away the political crooks' power to finagle rather than apply such taxes equally will lead to us having lower taxes and lower spending.
Almost all tax exemptions in this state go to individuals for things like residential electricity, groceries, prescription drugs, to the sales tax holiday to the newspapers you buy.
Dude - this lawsuit aint about picking winners and losers...its about Dick Harpootlian getting his jollies off by increasing the general fund by 50%. And mark my words, the Dems in the GA are going to stonewall the budget until most of that extra revenue goes towards social services and enacting Obamacare.
And the Fair Tax is going to need a 2/3 vote to get out of the House. You think that Dems are going to elinimate taxes when they already got the SC Sup Court to raise all taxes? Hell no. To get a 2/3 vote, you'd have to get at least 8 Dem votes and that just aint happening.
Dude, you just don't get it. Take off your tin foil hat and take a look at what is really going on here.
In their email, they say that they support getting rid of other exemptions and using tax reforms to lower taxes for everybody. The courts can't do that...all they can do is just raise these taxes.
I'm not a big business, but I don't want the courts to raise my electricity bill and water bill and perscription drug bill by 6%...do you?
I don't think you really read the details of this court case. but i do think you have some kind of obsession with Harrell and McConnell.
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